“You have to be metacognitive, especially when it comes to the dynamics of race and ethnicity and gender isms etc. Think about your thinking.”
Dr. LaTonya Jackson, HR expert and co-author of 5 Blinders to Seeing Color
Have you ever heard someone say the phrase, “I don’t see color”? Although it may be meant to reassure others (or to reassure the speaker) that they are not racially prejudiced, this phrase and others like it are actually problematic. Because as well intended as it may seem to the user, “I don’t see color,” and similar phrases, are highly damaging to relationships and can unravel DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) efforts.
In this episode, DEI champion, Dr. LaTonya Jackson, joins us for an important conversation on how inclusive leaders can better recognize the factors that may be contributing to a disconnect in their communication around issues related to color and culture. Tune in to learn what it means to embrace what Dr. Jackson calls “cultural sightedness.”
Dr. LaTonya Jackson is a dynamic, forward-thinking people director with extensive experience in talent and workforce development, thought leadership, change management, instructional strategy, and facilitation. She is a passionate and goal-oriented human resources expert highly skilled in collaborative partnerships, individual and group coaching, and people development. Dr. Jackson has also done extensive research on the experience of Black women in Fortune 500 companies, and she is the co-author of 5 Blinders to Seeing Color, which addresses the impact of the unconscious bias behind statements such as, “I don’t see color.”
Watch the interview:
Or read on for the transcript
Queing (she/her/queen): Welcome back to Voices with Talking Talent. My name is Queing Jones, and I get to be your host today. Today we’re going to examine and challenge a very sometimes well-meaning statement that is actually very problematic and that’s the statement of, I don’t see color and other statements like that. Joining me for this much-needed discussion is Dr. LaTonya Jackson. Let me tell you about Dr. Jackson. Dr. Jackson is a dynamic forward-thinking director, and she has extensive experience in workforce development, thought leadership, change management, instructional strategy, and facilitation. She’s a passionate and dynamic human resources professional who’s highly skilled in collaborative partnerships, individual and group coaching, and people development. She’s also done extensive research on the experience of black women in Fortune 500 companies. So, we’re very fortunate to have her join us today and we’re going to also be talking about the book she co-authored, which is called “5 Blinders to Seeing Color.” Please join me in welcoming Dr. LaTonya Jackson.
LaTonya Jackson: Woo! Hey you all!
Queing (she/her/queen): I’m so happy to have you here because this is one of those statements, the, I don’t see color thing and other phrases like it, that’s actually very common. A lot of people, although they may understand that it might be more harmful than good, they don’t necessarily get why. I was visiting a Facebook page the other day and, you know how sometimes you get into these many debates on different posts that these magazines do. I decided to say, who are these people? I had to go to someone’s page and see who they are based on some of the things they were saying in their comments. And I get over there and I saw that they had this post. It basically said I don’t see color.
It said something like, I don’t recognize what color you are until you say something about it. I don’t recognize that you are gay unless you say… And it just went all down the list with things related to race and gender and all the different types of identity. I thought to myself, I bet that this person thinks that pinning this on their page makes them come across as welcoming and that they’re more aware than they actually really are. It reminded me of the conversation that I knew we were going to be having about the I don’t see color thing. So, I want to get into this with you. Why do you think that people are continuing to push this whole I don’t see color thing? What is it that people just don’t get about it?
LaTonya Jackson: Queing, I think that’s a great question. So, at one time in my life, during the last few years, my family and I, we’ve been at a particular ministry for about 13/14 years. And during the time when the elections were happening, political unrest was very present, civil unrest was very present in society we would have members of our church family, and I say, family, because we were there for like I said, 14 years and they would walk up and they would grab my hand and they’d start rubbing it and they would say, I don’t see color. I would think to myself, I know what you’re trying to say, and I think what people are trying to say is, as you stated, they’re trying to be like, you know, I wasn’t raised to see difference. I wasn’t raised to see color. I wasn’t raised to notice it or pay attention to it. I was raised to treat people as human beings. But what they don’t recognize is by saying, I don’t see color or putting a statement on their social media page, it actually is creating more harm than good. So, I finally hit a breaking point, and this was during the time “Doc” Courage and I were getting ready to write this book. In fact, I think it sparked it a little bit more that it was urgent that we help people not make this mistake and just saying to the people, I know what you mean, and I know what your heart is because I’d walked with these people for 14 years, but it didn’t change the fact that I was still a black American in America.
I live in this country and the color of my skin does create some hindrances and some differences and just because you love me, doesn’t mean other people who don’t know me or know my husband or my boys. I know if Maurice is coming in from work, he works at the postal service. He goes to work at three o’clock in the morning. He’s got a hoodie on because he’s throwing freight. Well, if you don’t know that’s what he does, and you don’t know him, and he makes a move all kinds of things could happen. They didn’t understand that he could get stopped in the middle of the night and who knows what could happen. So, all of the different things, and now he travels in the middle of the night to some of these smaller towns and I happen to live in Arkansas, and it can be really concerning.
So, being very mindful of the fact that people want to appear welcoming. They want to say that they recognize the human aspect of a person as opposed to the race or the ethnic background of an individual which you can’t see, often you can’t tell the difference between those two. You might think you know but you don’t and as a result of that, they are in fact actually causing harm and creating divisiveness and they may not even fully understand it. So, the good news is there was a group of people that I could talk to and just say, you know, you shouldn’t say that. But I couldn’t reach the masses and when George Floyd’s incident happened “Doc” Courage and I decided that we needed to write this, it needed to happen. We needed to write the book and help people understand we know what you’re intending to say, but the impact of what you’re saying doesn’t match the intent. And that’s something I think people need to make that connection to.
Queing (she/her/queen): Yeah. That’s so important when you said people don’t realize that when they say things like that, they are actually highlighting the very thing they say they don’t see because you’re not saying among people who look like you randomly, I don’t see color. You wouldn’t say that then, you’re only saying it when you’re encountering other people of color. And as you talk about your work with “Doc” Courage, I wondered you as a black woman and then her as a white woman coming together to writing this book what do the conversations look like with her when she’s addressing people versus when you’re doing it? Because for some folks, and I want to hear what your response is for people who are outside of your family, your church family, that you spoke with. I wonder is it being well received when you say to someone, I don’t see color versus when “Doc” Courage, for example, might be saying to someone who looks like her, I don’t see color. What have you all seen as you’ve tried to really lovingly correct people with this?
LaTonya Jackson: Yeah. So, it’s interesting. She and I just did a presentation, I guess, if you want to describe it where we were introducing the book to a Sunday school class about a week ago and it was all white people and that was really interesting.
Queing (she/her/queen): Okay.
LaTonya Jackson: All white people, but the person that we were in communication with happens to be a black female and she’s a very passionate black female. So, you wonder, I wonder what else they’re doing up in here. But these were older white men and older white women, a whole other generation who lived at a time that was very different than the times we live in today. When Angela speaks to they pay attention because there is a white female, someone who looks like them, that they can relate to who’s saying here are my experiences being different, living in another country, coming back to America, and being different because of the fact of how I grew up. Because most of her younger childhood days were in Germany and so coming back into the wonderful south, as I like to call it, she had some experiences of her own, and then she married into Hispanic culture, further exacerbating her family. So, she is a person who embraces the differences and she’s very much well-received in this community that we’re in. When I say it to people, what we usually do is we say she has more of the church lens. I’m going to bring more of that corporate lens to the conversation, but they still hear me because I’m not beating them over the head and I’m not making that…
Queing (she/her/queen): That matters.
LaTonya Jackson: Yes, it absolutely does, and I choose to educate it is a choice. It’s not always easy, but I have trained myself and I learned this from a wise black female who was an executive leader at a Fortune 10 company. She since passed on, but I remember her saying to me, there are always two ways to respond in these types of moments you can choose to educate, or you can choose to be angry. I remember thinking, well, I choose to educate. That’s what I’ve always done. She says, then that’s fine. Don’t let it get under your skin and I think as black people, we are triggered because of the trauma that’s been in our bloodlines. It’s been in our family histories. It’s been in the evidence that we’ve seen with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and all of the many other names that we could begin to speak about.
It’s there and there’s a historical context as to why it’s there and then wealth gaps exist and persist because of the fact that just the simple color of our skin and how we were treated. It doesn’t discount or take away from the Jewish people who were in the Holocaust, and they were thrown in gas chambers. We don’t discount any of that and many people have embraced all of that as truth and reality. The issue here in America is we’ve not wanted to embrace our own history. Even Germany’s embraced the fact that part of their history was they were part of the Holocaust.
Queing (she/her/queen): Right.
LaTonya Jackson: They were integral members of that. So, they’ve had to recognize and accept. We haven’t done that here in America yet and so I think it just exacerbates it. So, when “Doc” Courage says, I don’t see color to white people, it is received, but it doesn’t mean they don’t receive it from me. They just are able to better receive it when we are there together, as opposed to if I was the angry black woman coming in with a lens that’s not a heart of love. For me, my heart is to love people, to listen, to make observations, to value them, and to hopefully educate and empower them into that next. That’s what love is and impart. So, if we do that, it’s more palatable and opens up the opportunity for conversation because many of us don’t know how to have conflict conversations. We just start talking and we get angry and all these emotions, and we don’t even know where our emotions are coming from.
And so, one of my coaches says, you have to think about your thinking. You have to be metacognitive and especially in this environment, especially when it comes to the dynamics of race and ethnicity and genderism etc. think about your thinking. Where did the thought come from that you’re experiencing right now as it relates to a person you’re engaging with? If you are angry, why are you angry with them? You know that most people don’t know these things. They don’t know that saying, I don’t see color is doing more harm than good. They don’t recognize. Their intent is positive therefore they think the impact is positive when in fact it’s the opposite. I think as we can educate, the words I left with that group last week as it related to seeing color was, start with your own family, start in your own house.
We can’t go out here and change the world. We can start with where we are in the people we are interacting with and if I walk up to a black person, say, hey, let’s not be so volatile toward people. Give them a chance to explain their intent and their meaning and then share how it impacted us. We might be able to move this thing further along. If I were saying that to one of my white friends or colleagues, hey, don’t say, I don’t see color. It’s harmful that people don’t get your intent. That’s not cool. Don’t do that. And you see, I can do that with both sides using black and white as an example. But my Hispanic family, my Mexican family, my Asian friends, I can do the same thing because I can maintain that I’m thinking about my thinking.
I’m thinking about in the Asian culture, it’s different in the black culture it’s different, in the Hispanic culture it’s different, in the white culture it’s different and given that we weren’t socialized to talk about race and color. In fact, we were socialized to do the direct opposite of that. You don’t talk about politics. You don’t talk about religion. You don’t talk about race and ethnic issues. You don’t talk about these things outside of your own house, outside of your own social network. Well, guess what happened? We have social media. We had political unrest. We had civil unrest, and we had a global pandemic happening. What are we going to talk about? All the things that are happening around us, yet we weren’t [14:36 inaudible] on how to talk about them. So, we’ve got to get to a point. Sorry, walking around your question, but hopefully I answered.
Queing (she/her/queen): No, this is great. When you talk about coming from that place of love, we call it here Talking Talent using empathy as a leadership superpower. Really that’s what it is because there are things that used to send me over the edge. There was no space for empathy there, but now that I’m addressing these things from more of looking at things through an empathy lens, if you will, then that is when you can educate. We can talk a little bit later though, about how sometimes that can be exhausting though.
LaTonya Jackson: Oh yeah.
Queing (she/her/queen): Because oftentimes what happens is the person who is on that side, that’s being harmed actually is doing a lot of the educating and when there’s resistance with that too, it can lead to fatigue. But you’re so right about that. People have to learn the skills to be able to have these conversations so we can move that along. You and “Doc” Courage say in the book that we need to move from color blindness to cultural sightedness. Talk to me about that. What do you mean by that?
LaTonya Jackson: Oh, so I’m going to give you a little history in order to explain this because…
Queing (she/her/queen): Okay.
LaTonya Jackson: …we were originally writing this. This started out as a training program we were designing for a government grant project opportunity that happened to be with the National Endowment of the Arts and it got canceled and a whole bunch of things. But we had this idea of how do we make transformation. So, we’re going to shift people from being colorblind to cultural sightedness. And so, what we mean by that just to give a little bit of that context is when you think about many of us are blind, we have blinders on, so you think about a horse. A horse if they’re wearing blinders they can’t see to their left or their right. They’re just going straight ahead. They’re moving in whatever direction they’re being driven.
So, when you think about color, we’ve all moved in the direction we were taught or driven therefore we couldn’t exercise empathy. We’re, just be angry, just be mad about it, or just discount everything that they ever do. They’re always lying to you or whatever story you might have been told and how you were socialized in that particular arena. So, we have this color, like I don’t see color. Well, that’s that color blindness. It’s like, well, if I say I don’t see it, then it’ll be okay and then you’re what you’re doing is you’re discounting my presence and my existence. One of the examples we use in the book is how many of us have seen a red light. If we drive anywhere, even if we’re walking, we see lights. If we’re on a bicycle, we see lights.
If we look around us, what do we see? We see color everywhere. Everywhere we look color is present. But if we put blinders on, we only see the color that we want to see what’s right in front of us. So, essentially color blindness is all about that, and not recognizing the culture, it’s not recognizing the differences. So, we are calling people to a place of cultural sightedness where you recognize and understand culture, the environments that people are in that you’re not just blind to the fact that not everybody does it the same way you do. I recently heard this example, and I was like, this is such a great example. I’m going to start using it in my trainings. Are you right or left-handed Queing?
Queing (she/her/queen): Right.
LaTonya Jackson: Right-handed. Okay. Well, would you say you’re a left-handed ally?
Queing (she/her/queen): I’ve never even thought about if I’m a left-handed ally.
LaTonya Jackson: Exactly. That’s being blind.
Queing (she/her/queen): Wow!
LaTonya Jackson: If you were born right-handed, you just expect the world to be. Everything you do is designed…
Queing (she/her/queen): In a way, it’s kind of designed that way.
LaTonya Jackson: It is. It’s designed because guess what? The majority of us in America and around the world are right-handed. Go brush your teeth with your left hand for a day.
Queing (she/her/queen): I’ve tried it because I tried it once as a brain exercise because I’ve heard, if you tried to do things with your less dominant hand, it kind of helps with your focus and your memory. I grew up in a time where kids were kind of forced, might not be the right word, but I’m going to use it to be right-handed. I remember being in classes and teachers saying use your right hand and they would have those little somethings that they would put on the pencil or something to try to get the students to grip or hold it right. So, it’s like, we’re going to just make you right-handed. So, yeah.
LaTonya Jackson: And I remember… Yeah. So, we all have some areas where we’re blind. We don’t think about when I write in a notebook with my right hand. The notebook is designed for me to write on it the way I want to. Imagine the left-handed person, they’re smearing all their notes when they write with their left hand on…
Queing (she/her/queen): That’s right.
LaTonya Jackson: …that same notebook. So, it’s as simple as that, that blindness that we’re talking about but being aware. If you were to try to write with your left hand all of a sudden you might find, oh my goodness, the world is not designed for left-handed people. The scissors are not designed for left-handed people. You have to have left-handed scissors otherwise that cutting is kind of weird and the thumb and how it works. So, that’s essentially what we’re talking about. Thank you. Thank you for that example.
Queing (she/her/queen): I want to pause and bring this out because I think this is worth highlighting. The fact that they’re called lefthanded scissors versus…
LaTonya Jackson: Scissors
Queing (she/her/queen): …scissors. So, the fact that they’ve got to have this alternate name still in a way excludes it.
LaTonya Jackson: It’s an us versus them kind of thing.
Queing (she/her/queen): It’s an other. Yeah.
LaTonya Jackson: Yeah. So, that’s essentially the color blindness and cultural sightedness. That example is one that I choose to share with you because I was thinking of an example, how can I get to share this in a way that makes it more palatable? So, when you think about the fact that it’s just scissors. I’m just going to go get a pair of scissors. Well, essentially most people in the dominant culture, it just is. I’m just going to go do this. and they don’t have awareness of the fact that wait a minute, my hair is different, and I might have to wear it straight today because I’m going for a job interview. They might not be aware of the fact that just because you can afford to live over here that I’m not actually getting paid the same amount of money as you but you think I am, but I’m actually not.
I’m actually getting paid $50,000 less than you or $20,000 less or it’s 84 cents to every dollar dependent upon the group that you’re describing. For some the wealth gap. Well, when their parents pass away, there’s an inheritance. When our parents pass away, I must use myself as an example. When generations before me are passing on most of the time we’re still trying to find/gather everybody together so we can pay for the funeral. There was no expectation that there was life insurance, or inheritance left. So, there are all of these different aspects of life and living that are blind, that people in the dominant culture are blind to and color being one of them. I use finances. I used a whole bunch of different examples there but it’s that same example of the world is just designed to work for you, and you don’t have to think about this.
So, our bringing people to a place of cultural sidedness has to do with just using the scissors right and left-handed. The world was designed for right-handed people, but if you are left-handed, then you’ve, there are extra things that you have to go through and how do you as a right-handed person become more aware of where you can be an ally to the left-handed person and advocating for there to be scissors that are created equal. That there could be a notebook that’s designed for the left-handed person to write in the same way and not get smears all over their arm or lose half of their notes because of that. That’s essentially what we’re talking about is doing that, but doing it for color, doing it in the same way of looking at race and color and really any and all aspects of this inclusion spectrum.
Queing (she/her/queen): Very important and I love that example because as you think about the ally piece, it also is a reminder to not just educate yourself, but to observe and ask questions. What do people need? Because there is a big allyship gap between what allies do versus what that group might actually need. A more recent example is there’s been a lot of talk in pop culture about Lizzo and Beyoncé using a certain word in their songs and that word being offensive to people who are living with disabilities. Well, a lot of organizations and activists from that community have since come out and said, we’re not offended by that. Then I heard one say, this is another example of the ableist community, trying to speak for us, where, for them, that wasn’t it.
In the 2021 Women in the Workplace Report, they kind of touch on this. They talk about the percentage of people in corporate America who identify themselves as allies. These are predominantly white employees that they surveyed for this. It was 70-something percent of people who identified as allies, but less than 50% of those 40-something percent. You guys I’ll have to put that report in the comments because I’m just adding the word something because I don’t remember the exact.
LaTonya Jackson: The McKinsey Report.
Queing (she/her/queen): A significant amount of those same allies were actually not doing consistent allyship actions. And of that, the actions that they were doing were not things that the community, which were black women, Latino women, Asian women, LGBTQ women, and women living with disabilities were not the things that those people said they wanted. They were saying they wanted mentors, sponsorships but allies were thinking me not in agreement and saying yes is being an ally. There were some other things, but that was just, you know, I’m just being silly right now. It was things like that. So, it’s find out what people want, I don’t think that should be missed as we’re helping people, including ourselves be more cultural sided knowing what people need, not what you think they need.
LaTonya Jackson: Yes, and allyship I don’t remember how they defined it. I was just looking at the McKinsey Report. I haven’t finished it yet, so I…
Queing (she/her/queen): Okay.
LaTonya Jackson: …haven’t gotten to that part but here’s some research that I was doing. Ally ship is defined as an intentional decision to learn about the lived experiences, thoughts, and challenges faced by others in choosing to empathize and act in support of someone else in the way they want to be supported.
Queing (she/her/queen): That last part and the way they…
LaTonya Jackson: It’s what you were saying. I think most definitions exclude that piece, but it’s in the way they want to be supported, and again, going back to, how do we get cultural sidedness? Well, think about how you want to be supported. If this was your reality, how would you want to be supported? What does support look like? What actions would you want people to take and how would you want them to take that actions and how would you want them to empathize with your position? Being able to ask yourself those questions can help create some of that cultural sidedness, which ultimately leads to cultural connection. When we do that, right, we can start to remove the blinders and that’s ultimately our goal is how do we help people start to remove those blinders?
Queing (she/her/queen): And in the book, you and “Doc” Courage identify five blinders. What are those?
LaTonya Jackson: They are anxiety and uncertainty. That’s one blinder. Anxiety has to do with our emotional processes, with uncertainty dealing with our thinking process. Blinder two is power misused. So, we all have power, just how are we using it? But when power is misused, it can create blinders for people. Egocentrism is blinder number three and that’s all about our sense of self and we talk about individualistic versus collectivistic cultures and the differences in that and then number four is ignorance which we all… Again, just the example we just shared on this podcast today of left-handed versus right-handed and thinking about the differences and the nuances and the experience of those who are lefthanded, as opposed to the world being designed for right-handed. So, where are we ignorant? Where’s our education? Where do we need more?
Then immaturity, which has to do with the history of race and equality in America specifically. Understanding how we were socialized, and I know I’ve referenced that several times in our conversation. But really understanding, not just the story you were told or what your life was like, but really taking the time to understand and recognize what history has done to create the lives of others. As we do that then we can become less ignorant. I won’t say we’ll be completely out of ignorance. There still will be things that we will learn but we can become less ignorant by doing the research and understanding and moving and recognizing the trauma impacts and the things that get into DNA. There are all kinds of research that support all of that. That immaturity. When you have trauma, you can be stuck in specific ways of thinking and specific actions, and that blame shame we talk about with the anxiety and uncertainty. So, all of the things are connected but recognizing that if we can address them one at a time, we can start to move the needle.
Queing (she/her/queen): Wow. So, I hesitate to use the word heavy, and the reason why is because our head of diversity and inclusion here, as well as other officers who are in that space, I’ve heard them say things like when we say that these are heavy issues or delicate or sensitive issues that kind of lends it to almost have people think this is a burden. This is too much to be thinking about or something like that versus these being just necessary things that we all have to figure out as people. So, I will say though that for some DEI professionals, and then just sometimes for diverse talent within an organization, it can feel at times like a lot. There’s this term you’ve probably seen it too DEI fatigue that people are experiencing, whether it’s people working in the space or people who just feel like they’re tired of hearing about it as well. What is your advice for people who are kind of feeling like that? Whether they’re on the side of feeling like they always have to educate or feeling like nothing’s changing or transforming quick enough, or for those people who are in organizations where they have to participate in DEI programming and training, and they might feel like I’m over this, I’m tired of this. It’s too much. Have you dealt with that yourself by the way?
LaTonya Jackson: I have. I did a lot of this work when I was in college. Backstory, we had a cross burning, we had a professor use the N-word. His email was called Hibler’s email. You could probably research that and find this sort of thing and then we had one other incident. I must have blocked it out of my mind because it was that bad. But we had a lot going on and I went to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. So, predominantly white institution, that’s what they’re formally known as in higher education, and we had these incidents and all within a month or two months. I mean, it was very close together and so there was just a lot going on and we were going to host the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government there that year. So, a lot of meeting with chancellors and meeting with people. So, for years, I was just kind of in all of this.
Speaking about things, I can’t remember what his name was, but I personally don’t get into politics. But we had a guy from California. It was a black gentleman. It was related to Proposition 209. Prop 209, I think was the number and I could be wrong on that, but he came to visit, and people convinced me to go to this lecture to see this guy. He was up there talking, and I still remember he was talking about how people didn’t help him, but then he shares this story about his grandmother and how he wouldn’t be the man that he is today.
Again, black man, wouldn’t be who he is today without his grandmother and his life and how she raised him and took him in and all these things. But then it was like the flip story of I got to this stage in my life of being where I am and known as who I am without help and I was like, this doesn’t equate for me. So, I asked him a question, he got angry with me. So, after dealing with all of that for four years, I was like, I don’t want to touch inclusion diversity, or equity in any way, shape, or form. I was like, I’m done that. That was it. That was too much being called upon all the time to answer questions, to get what are your thoughts about this? I mean, it’s a lot and so I really didn’t.
So, when I got into the career field, people were like, oh, I think you’d be so good working over here. Are you part of this? The NAACP. Are you part of this? I was like, yeah, I’ve been there done all these things. I’m not doing it anymore and so I didn’t. I’m a member of a sorority and so I stayed active there and we have our pillars and things that we’re connected to so that was the extent of my engagement. Then I’m in corporate America, I’m working, and I work in talent development in the HR space and it’s starting to creep up and people are like, you know, I think you’d be really good. Don’t you pigeonhole me! I am not going over to DE&I; I’m not going to work over there because you can get stuck.
Again, now do I choose to educate? Absolutely everywhere I am, but I can educate you everywhere I am, I do not need a title to do that and so I didn’t. So, when George Floyd, we all watched it. We’re sitting there and I could barely watch it. I’m very emotional in that way. So, I was like, a couple of minutes in and I’m breaking down. I was like, we got to do something. I got to do something and that’s when I reached out to “Doc” Courage and said, it’s time. We had tried to write this book before many, many things happened. She’s cancer-free today, but she had breast cancer. We were walking through that. I ended up having another baby. Every time we sat down to try to write this book or version of it, it would not work. But when that incident happened, I knew it was time and so we did. Now you fast forward now I facilitate these sessions all the time and I’m currently on a sabbatical from work.
Queing (she/her/queen): Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask you, what do you do? Yeah. What do you do to replenish yourself?
LaTonya Jackson: Yeah. Burnout is real and burnout can happen in many forms and so if you’re in this space, I do think you have to take time away to recharge and allow yourself to just be without having to educate or in whatever capacity you’ve been serving, do something. Just do nothing. It’s okay. That’s absolutely okay. Make sure you have a therapist. I think that’s important, a therapist or a coach. I think those are important aspects of doing this work. Somewhere you are safe where you can talk about what happened in the session today. That person got angry with me or whatever. I could share many stories, but the things that happen and how I have to stay neutral, and I see the political things, you know, I literally was facilitating on the day of the insurrection. 90% of my class session were white corporate American people and I had to just pause in the session and go, do we want to continue this session today? Because obviously there’s a whole lot of emotion.
So, recognizing it for yourself, I think is also important. Recognizing when you might need to step back or cancel the session because you are emotionally charged or triggered. I’m working with a client right now doing some facilitations for their organization and I think they are doing a beautiful job of this, but they’re actually having the conversations and they’re putting it all on the table. I think as trainers, facilitators, and educators, in whatever capacity you choose to do this work you have to be able to have the hard conversations, but making sure that you are not triggered by the conversation when you’re having it.
So, taking time away as often as you need to. Making sure you have a coach or a therapist or a combination of the two so that when you are triggered or when things are going on, you have a safe place to talk about it and you’re not burdening your friends and family. Because if we’re all doing this and we’re all educating, we’re all talking about it then it’s just fuel to the fire for all of us and none of us gets relief. So going to the people and the professionals who can actually help you move forward past it or identify why you were triggered or help you to walk through it so the next time you encounter it or if you choose not to encounter it again, whichever decision you make and be willing to make that decision that you know what, I’ve done this. It’s great. I don’t know if I can continue to do this because of how it affects me personally.
That takes real strength to be able to recognize. I gave myself two to three years in actually doing the work that I’m doing right now, and we’ll see where I’m at. But I did recognize I was frustrated. I was stressed out. I started yelling at my kids and then I realized one day when I had to facilitate the session, I was actually angry. I did not want to do it and so there are a lot of signs along the journey, and it requires you to maintain integrity with yourself and to be honest. I had to be honest with myself to say LaTanya, okay, you’re angry. You love facilitating so why are you angry about doing this session? And I walked myself through I’m angry or I had to think about my thinking, why am I angry?
Then you can do the five whys. Why are you angry? Okay when you answer that question, well, why did that happen? And what it was I didn’t want to do this work when I started. I had sort of put that stake in the ground many years ago. I said, yes and I’ve been on this almost three-year journey of actively engaging in this space. I have not had a break. I needed a break and so I took one and that was not an easy decision. Obviously, I’m still doing the work, but the break, taking time away, traveling, spending time, meeting new people, exploring new relationships, and just getting away from all of that. Not engaging. Even if I see something, I make a note, but I don’t engage it in that moment. I come back to it later when I have the space and the capacity. When I go back to work, I’ll probably pick up a lot of the things that I’ve been seeing over the last few weeks and start to dig into them and say, well, why is this happening? And I’ll do the research and we’ll put some things in place, but you got to do those things. Ultimately, I’m saying, take care of yourself. If I summed it all up into words, it’s just take care of yourself in the journey.
Queing (she/her/queen): So important and before you go, tell us about some of the other experiences that see color offers and how folks can learn more about you.
LaTonya Jackson: Oh, thank you for that. Well, you can go to latonyajackson.com/inclusion and download a resource that talks about how to remove the blinders. I gave you what the blinders are, but you can get a free resource, join our email list, and with that, you’ll be able to email. The emails come straight to me. Most people don’t know that, but they do come to me, and I’ll read them, and I do respond to them. You can also sign up. You can get the book there. You can reach out for workshops and presentations as you just heard me talk about earlier. A Sunday school class is going to take our book and they’re going to do a Sunday school lesson, which I found fascinating, and they invited us to come and kind of kick off the introduction. So, we’re always available for presentations, speaking engagements, podcasts like this, and doing training. We have some training that we designed and that’s how this all began. So, if you want us to come in and do some training with your organization, we’re happy to do that.
Queing (she/her/queen): Thank you so much. And thank you all for tuning in for this. Please like, share, and comment. Have a good evening, Dr. Jackson, and we’ll see you all next time.
LaTonya Jackson: Thank you Queing. Bye.
